Can't Find My Way Home
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 14th story in Ramble On series. S7. On the road between Canton and Seattle, Dean is sinking more deeply into doubt and grief. Dick Roman's a dead end, Sam's trying to keep them busy with jobs, but his head's a mess. He doesn't need work. He needs time and rest and the one person who gives him peace is on the other side of the country. No slash. Feedback welcomed.
**Can't Find My Way Home**

* * *

 _ **March 12, 2012.**_

Two thousand, four hundred miles to go, Dean thought vaguely as they passed the big, gaudy highway sign. Canton to Seattle. Clear across the country.

Again.

He shifted against the door, trying to find a more comfortable place for his shoulder. Sam was driving; he was supposed to be sleeping. He couldn't sleep. He'd pulled the sunglasses from the glove box, settled them on his face. At least his brother wouldn't know that he was awake, staring mindlessly at the fields and roads and towns and forests flashing past them.

The noise of the tyres, the slightly uneven sound of the engine – something he'd meant to look at before they'd left Canton – the occasional roar of a truck as it passed them were the only sounds he could hear. Except a voice, in his head. A hard voice.

 _Boo-hoo. Cry me a river, ya nancy._

Ness' voice.

He'd only known of Eliot Ness from the movie, _The Untouchables_. It had been an … interesting experience to meet the Treasury agent in person. Costner had sure gotten it wrong. Ness'd been hard and gritty and tough and unwilling to cut anyone any slack that he wasn't going to give himself.

 _Nancy_. The insult hadn't been familiar but the intent'd been crystal clear. Maybe he was. Now. Years of torture stripping the armour he'd spent his childhood building. Years of pain and losses cutting through all the old scar tissue, leaving open and bleeding wounds in him again. The only relief he got these days was too far away to help him now. And he was getting further and further away from her with every mile Sam put under their wheels.

 _Tell me; are all hunters as soft as you in the future?_

Soft.

His mouth compressed and he shifted uncomfortably against the seat. He'd worked his ass off to be hard, to be strong and now some dick from the past had called him soft.

Bobby's death had hit him hard; was still hitting him, he acknowledged reluctantly, despite the leaching of some of that poison over the past few weeks. The lingering traces of the god's meddling with his guilt were still lurking around his subconscious, throwing up nightscapes that weren't really nightmares but left him disoriented and sweat-drenched when he woke. That wasn't helping. He had too much time to think, looking for jobs and driving across the country and no time to get it straight in his head, the levis and demons and his own ravelled feelings whipping at him to do something, anything, before time ran out. The combination was going to drive him nuts.

He was no longer just John Winchester's eldest son. That shell he'd constructed, that front he'd presented to the world, had been dismantled bit by bit, the pieces torn away, from the moment his father had disappeared and he'd gone to find Sam. He wasn't just Sam's protector anymore either, he thought, the admission bringing a flush of discomfort and unease with its seeming disloyalty and the sneaking feeling of relief that underlay it. His brother needed someone at his back, not a guardian. Sam hadn't been a kid for a long time, and all his attempts to protect him weren't what anyone could call a model of success.

What'd been emerging, gradually, from behind those decades-old ways he'd thought of himself, was just him. Not better than who he'd been. Not worse, he considered. Just different.

He squirmed again, trying to fit his shoulder into the high edge of the bucket seat, eyes slitting open behind the dark glasses, watching the empty plains racing past the car without seeing them.

She'd told him to look at what he'd done. To accept it was a part of him. To understand what it meant. He huffed a sigh against the glass.

 _The things we hold as truths are more dependent on the situation than we think they are._

A part of him was a stone-cold killer.

 _For you or Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill, it's just, uh ... it scares me sometimes._

He hadn't realised that part of him – that part he'd known about long before he'd gotten down into the pit; a part he'd recognised and had made him wonder about himself – had been the same part that'd come out in Hell to do whatever it had to do. To survive.

It still scared him.

The old song wound up through memory, a soft but insistent background to his thoughts, the delicate guitar plucking at his weariness so accurately, it sent a shiver down his neck.

 _Still I can't find my way home,  
And I ain't done nothing wrong, but I can't find my way home._

* * *

 _ **I-94W, Minnesota**_

Dean glanced at the fuel gauge and back to the road. Ahead, a sign advised Evansville was coming up. He flexed his hands on the wheel, rolled his shoulders. He'd been driving for four straight hours. The car wasn't the only one to need a top-up of go-juice.

Ten minutes later, he was pulling into the Gas'n'Go, bumping across the uneven concrete lot to the pumps and in the passenger seat, Sam blinked and stretched, mouth open in a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Wh're we?"

"Evansville," Dean said, braking gently and turning off the ignition. "You wanna grab us something to eat? Coffee?"

"Sure."

He watched his brother open the door and half-fall onto the ground, long legs splaying like a colt's until Sam focussed enough to get them straightened out, using the door to keep himself upright while he scrubbed at his face with his arm and ran stiff fingers through his hair.

"Usual, right?" Sam leaned down to peer into the car.

"Right," Dean agreed, opening his door and getting out. The night air was cool, crisp against his skin and he breathed it in, nose wrinkling at the accompanying smells of gasoline and diesel.

He walked around to the rear, propping himself on the trunk to unscrew the gas cap. The nozzle of the pump slid in and he listened absently to the gurgle of the fuel, filling his baby's tank.

It'd always been like this, almost as long as he could remember. Driving. Motels. Fill-ups. Sleeping in the car. Waking in a strange town or in the middle of nowhere. His memories of childhood – what he thought of as his real childhood, with his mother and father and a home – had been cut off abruptly at the age of four and a half, but those he recalled glowed in his mind's eye, golden-edged and full and rich.

Sam'd gotten out, had three whole years of normal. He'd had the one; too little, too late and not what he'd thought it'd be.

 _I want you to go back to school. I want Dean to have a home._

It still delivered a faint thrill of shock, that memory. His father's voice had been rough and torn and aching, saying out loud what he knew about his sons. What he'd wanted for them. Dean hadn't thought anyone'd known about it, that never-spoken wish.

The pump clicked off and he lifted the nozzle out, screwing the cap back on automatically.

The further they went down this road, the more unlikely it was he'd ever get a home. Or peace. Or even a place he could just be himself … no excuses, no lies. At the back of his mind, tucked away and hidden for now, a red-haired woman smiled at him. When she was around, he felt it. Peace and being himself. He had for a long time now. When she wasn't … when she wasn't, it was hard to remember that feeling or how to believe in it.

 _You are the reason I've been waiting so long; somebody holds the key._

The whole world'd changed, he thought, setting the nozzle back onto the pump and looking over the roof of the car toward the lit windows of the store.

He could see his brother's tall frame by the counter. In the corner of his eye a flashing red sign caught his attention. And at the same time, the world was just the same. The car still needed fuel. People were still going about their business, getting what they wanted – or what they needed. They'd picked up the pieces after the devil and Death had run amok across the world, not even knowing how close it'd all come to ending.

The new identification had been waiting in Akron and there'd been an envelope of fifties stashed in the mail drop box as well. They could use a decent night's sleep, hot food, hot showers and they wouldn't appear on the levi's radar with a cash-paid one night stay.

Pushing off the car, he headed toward the store, wondering if the clerk would know of a good takeout place open this late.

* * *

The room was clean-ish, smelling of Chinese barbecue and the girly floral-scented shampoo his brother had been using the last few months. Dean flipped through the motel's cable offerings, lying back on the bed, a beer within arm's reach.

He was clean and had even taken the time for a close shave. The soft textures of equally clean clothes were comfortable against his skin. His stomach was full of hot, spicy Asian and the throb of the incipient headache that'd been threatening when they'd pulled off the interstate was gone.

"Did you even look at the file, Dean?"

"No," he said, staring at the screen.

He hadn't looked at Sam's latest wild goose chase because he knew he wouldn't be able to find the enthusiasm his brother had about it. There was only one place he wanted to be and he couldn't bring himself to say it, not even to himself, let alone admit it to Sam.

"Dean –"

The tone of his brother's voice held a warning note, that we-need-to-talk-about-this warning he'd learned to hate years ago. He shot a flat-eyed stare back and a trickle of relief slid through him when he saw Sam scowl and turn back to the laptop.

He wanted a night off … or maybe a week … from the job, from the travelling, from his life. His thumb found the channel button on the tv's remote and he flicked through another dozen channels.

 _And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home._

* * *

 _ **March 13, 2012. I-90W, North Dakota.**_

The interstate was flowing and they'd made good time, Dean thought, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he tried to force himself to close his eyes and catch up on the sleep he'd missed.

The motel'd been fine. The beds had been comfy. It'd been quiet. He hadn't gotten more than an hour's sleep out of the whole fucking night, his brain in overdrive and his subconscious more than ready to take over if sleep did sneak up on him.

He was used to bad dreams, used to nightmares. They'd made up the bulk of his sleeping time since he'd been old enough to be scared spitless of the things he'd known his father was hunting, all the things he had to make sure didn't get him or his brother. After Hell, they'd been specific for a while. That'd tapered off. He wasn't sure if the reason had been because his subconscious had run out of new ways to torture him or because he'd somehow accepted at least some of the things he'd done. He wasn't ready to admit that talking about it to someone else had done anything in particular, even when he longed for nights with Ellie, and the peace of dreamless sleep they brought.

Beside the cheap, crappy sedan, the scenery raced on, an unimportant blur.

* * *

"You wanna stop tonight?" Sam asked an hour later, glancing sideways at his brother's slumped form.

He got a grunt in response, deciding it was an affirmative grunt. Dean had been leaning against the window for the last couple of hours, pretending to sleep, as if seven years of riding around together hadn't given both of them an acute radar for what was real and what wasn't in every expression, gesture, mannerism and behavioural tell.

He was beginning to think that trying to keep busy wasn't such a hot idea for either of them right now. They were keeping off the grid, out of view of the levis, but the costs were getting higher. Dean's face was pinched and shadowed, and Sam knew his own didn't look much better. The hallucinations were coming and going; he couldn't predict when the devil might appear and it was always a shock. On top of that, the problems of trust between them weren't fixed. Might never be fixed, he acknowledged, running a hand through his hair as he glanced sideways again.

What was between them now was unknown territory, full of pits and traps where trust and faith had been once. Sam'd never seen his brother so torn up, not even back in the days when Dean had been the mediator between brother and father. It wasn't just Bobby's death, although he thought Dean wasn't even close to getting through that loss. It wasn't just they were being hounded across the country, in a manner so similar to the year they'd spent running from angels and demons, he sometimes woke with a stuttering certainty Uriel was in the room, staring at him.

Letting out a soft sigh, Sam shifted his gaze back to the road, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the noon sun that'd flattened everything to a two-dimensional, surrealistic, movie backdrop.

His brother was no longer his protector. He'd seen that after Dean had lost Ellie and gone to live with the Braedens. He didn't doubt that Dean would die for him, if a situation arose that might call for it, but it wasn't his brother's default position anymore. After the debacle of Becky's spell, he'd told Dean it was time he looked out for himself, and they'd both known what he was talking about. His big brother had something else to live for.

Or, Sam thought, with another sneaking sideways glance, he would if he could get his head around the idea he deserved it.

Those doubts weren't entirely of Dean's doing, either. Sam knew his brother would've ignored the case in Seattle if she'd been around, if she'd gone back to the cabin with them instead of peeling off in Kansas. They were completely different in a lot of ways, but too damned similar in others, he thought. Both of them too responsible to take the way they felt lightly, to ignore what they believed had to be done.

Not that he could give lessons in making the right choices at the right time, Sam told himself derisively. Sarah had been the only one who'd come close to letting him feel like himself in the past seven years and he'd never been back, not even once, to see her. The temptation of staying had been too great and if anything had happened, if he'd drawn anything to her, he couldn't've lived with it.

"We could stop around Billings," he said, trying to get his thoughts out of the past and back to current requirements.

There was another vaguely affirmative grunt from Dean.

The town was big enough to have a few places they could squat in, Sam thought. Off the grid and out of sight. Neither of them wanted to take the risk of having the levis track down their new IDs.

"Patrick left a message," he added a moment later, thinking of the gruff British hunter and his connections to Rome, and the message that'd been blinking on his phone when they'd left the motel that morning. "About the origins of the levis."

"Hmmm."

"Said there's some kind of reference to a stone or a tablet of some kind, definitely pre-biblical," Sam continued, ignoring Dean's disinterest. "He'll have more information about it in a a few days, he thought."

The silence from the passenger seat was eloquent and he shrugged internally. Things were moving. Just too slow for his brother.

* * *

Waiting to see if Sam would keep trying to initiate a conversation, Dean kept his eyes closed and his face turned to the cool window glass, the vibration of the car transferring to the corner of his brow and cheekbone as he leaned against it, that hum on his skin almost soporific.

He wanted to give a crap about the levis, to feel his brain kick into high gear, revved and ready to go and give those sons-of-bitches the taste of payback for everything they'd taken. A few weeks ago, he'd been brittle with that need.

But not any more.

Grief still filled him if he let his thoughts get too close to Bobby, but it no longer bulged and pulsed and tortured his waking moments. The rage that'd been powering him had been shocked into hiding, subsumed in worse fears, in questions he had no real answers for, his lack of experience with what he wanted making everything look too risky.

He heard Sam let out a dramatic exhale to his left. There was more crap he wasn't dealing with, he thought in irritation. They'd come to a kind of truce, the sort of truce they'd been making more and more often in the last couple of years. Putting stuff behind them and pretending everything was just fucking okey-dokey because there was no time to get it clear between them, and neither wanted to really talk about it.

It was something he used to be able to do pretty easily. Just lock it up and throw away the key. But not anymore. Now everything had more weight. More edges, cutting into him deeper.

 _Wait, if I – if I kill Chronos ... I'm stuck here?_

That realisation had come late and with the force of a wrecking ball. Never going home.

 _You just now realized? Oh, come on. 1944 ain't so bad._

 _Not so bad if you had nothing to go back to_ , he'd thought, wiping Ezra's kiss from his mouth. _Not so bad if someone wasn't waiting for you_.

He'd figured out a way to clue Sam into what was going on, but he hadn't held out any real hope he was going home and instead of the rage he'd thought he'd feel about that, there'd been nothing but a flat, resigned pain. Sometimes, he knew, luck just ran out.

 _What about us, huh? Why do we have to sacrifice everything?_

He'd felt the same pain, back then. The same knowing of what he'd do to save everyone else … just not himself.

Chronos – Ethan – had grabbed him, the god of time's eyes boring into him. _"I can see inside of you, you'd do the same thing for her!"_

No, he'd realised then. He wouldn't. Wouldn't kill randomly, wouldn't sacrifice anyone else, no matter what the cost, or how much it hurt, or what he lost.

 _Jesus, Ellie_ , he'd thought. She'd been right. It might have been a part of him, that darkness he'd brought out of Hell, but it wasn't all he was. It wasn't who he was.

He'd swung the stake and then the world had turned inside out. And Jody's cry as the god had thrown him down had told him he was back in his own time, his own world, straining to hang onto consciousness as his brother'd swept the stake from the floor and plunged it into Chronos.

It should've felt like a million-dollar win, that moment. The job was done and he was back, but all he could feel was a rising mountain of doubt, barely hearing Chronos' prophetic snarl about the end of the world.

 _Maybe it's not them. Maybe it's_ you _._

He hadn't given anything up for Cassie. Or for Lisa. Not even for Ben. And he'd been prepared to lose everything to finish this job.

 _Are you_ that _screwed in the head?!_

Was he, he wondered? So screwed up he'd never fight for what he wanted? So screwed up he'd always choose someone else's chance for a life over his?

He twitched in the seat, uneasy and restlessly aware he was going over the same ground he'd covered a hundred times. He knew she knew never would've seen it that way. Sacrifice was only sacrifice if it was freely given, and everything else was murder. She would've known he'd had no choice; would've known it because, somehow, she knew all the parts of him and she knew, better than he did, who he was, down deep.

When he thought about it, he still felt himself to be an ordinary guy. Worse experiences and memories than the average guy, maybe, but still wanting what he thought most guys did. Ellie saw him differently. She'd told him his ability to feel so deeply was what had saved him in Hell. Had made the time he'd spent there worse, but ultimately had been what had kept him human and sane. She'd told him that his experiences, what he'd survived and seen and done, had made him an extraordinary man. When he looked at himself through her eyes, the way she saw him, he saw that man too. A man he'd wanted to be, a man he'd thought he would never be able to become. It was only when she wasn't around he wasn't sure that's who he was. He wasn't the broken mess he'd been after finding out that he'd broken the first seal, not any more. He wasn't his father.

He rolled his eyes to the left, just making out Sam's profile against the brightly-lit window.

Sam was like Dad, he thought, remembering the first time he'd realised that likeness. More like him, anyway. Able to compartmentalise the areas of his life. Able to shut off his emotions. Maybe he was like their mother. He hadn't known her for long enough, or well enough, to know that for sure. He just knew that now, there wasn't much of Dad left surrounding him. The discipline, maybe. He'd learned that lesson well from his father.

He was sick of wrestling with what he'd done and what he was doing, he thought, eyes screwing tightly shut. He wanted – he needed – to get out of this, somehow. To not feel every fucking decision and the grate of every fucking consequence.

 _But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time  
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home._

Sam kept driving, heading west into the sun.

* * *

 _ **Billings, Montana**_

 _Everybody loses everybody. And then one day, boom. Your number's up, but at least you're making a difference._

Well, they'd lost almost everybody.

Dean woke with the thought; rubbing a hand over his face and feeling a gritty sweat collect along his fingers.

They sure had.

He sat up in the dark room. Down the hall, he could hear his brother, asleep, soft snores vibrating in the still, close air. The house was condemned, on the outskirts of town, Sam finding it as they'd gotten closer and the night'd wrapped around them.

Throwing the blanket off, he reached for his jeans, finding them by touch in the pile by the side of the bedroll.

He went to the bathroom, closing the door. Looking into the cracked and spotted mirror, he could see the lines of strain, shadowed by the dim light spilling through the broken window from the streetlight outside. He turned the cold tap and splashed the running water over his face, running wet fingers through his hair as he leaned on the edge of the sink.

They had nothing. No leads on the leviathans. No place to go. They were so far off the grid that it felt like they'd never get back to even the semi-normal life they'd lived only a couple of years ago. A life that included regular showers, actual beds, furniture that hadn't been retrieved from the streets or the local dump. He looked at the mouldy paint, peeling over his head and repressed a shudder.

What kind of a life was this? He was thirty-two, living like a teenage drug dealer. He didn't want the high life, didn't give a rat's about new cars or matching décor, but this … he straightened up and stared at the cracked tub, the shredded newspaper that drifted like fall leaves across the floor … this was a fucking bad joke.

He wiped his face on his towel, hanging from a nail driven into the wall, and opened the door.

Some of the stairs were questionable and he kept to the wall side of the staircase, turning into the living room, with its choices of sagging, possibly mouse-infested sofa or two folding garden chairs. He picked up one of the chairs and carried it to the window, setting it down. The front garden was dead, dried grass stiff and unmoving to the fence, the twisted and gnarled old fruit tree hanging over the sidewalk, blocking nearly half of his view of the street.

Reaching for the cooler, he pulled off the lid and his fingers found a tepid beer, twisting off the top. What was the point of this? Chasing after cases when they needed to be focussing on how to find and kill the monsters that were rampaging around the country. Dean tipped the bottle and swallowed the lukewarm liquid that flowed into his mouth, eyes closing.

The lack of progress wasn't the problem, or at least, not the main part of the problem, and he knew it.

In his mind, an image rose, unbidden but welcomed. Ellie's face, soft and relaxed in sleep, her hair a long spill over her bare skin and the white sheets. He dug into his coat pocket for the cell, thumb hitting the right number without the need to look. Lifting the device to his ear, he listened to the short rings, brows drawing together when the call went straight to voicemail.

Off. Or used up, he thought, terminating the call before the end of the message.

She'd been buying prepaids for the last month, just buying them and throwing them once the credit had gone. It was keeping her off the leviathan radar but it made communication more difficult. Most of their accommodation wasn't running to wireless and neither he or Sam were ready to risk their new ID too often with motels if there was another option.

She'd called a couple of days ago, tired and harried with trying to find a new base, driving back and forth across the country looking at places that might be suitable.

" _Hey."_

He'd been glad to hear her voice, even the tinny, far-off facsimile that came over the airwaves.

" _How are you doing, Dean?"_ She'd sounded concerned, and he'd known she'd heard it in his voice, the mix of pain and longing and frustration and weariness, and he'd closed his eyes, telling himself to pull it together, to not lay this crap on her.

" _Fine. All good."_

He'd looked down at the scarred table top of the diner, hoping he sounded more like himself _. "Heading out to Seattle, Sam thinks there's a case there."_

He remembered hearing her long exhale on the other end, imagining her calculating time and distance and coming up with the same answers he had. Finding a time to meet was near to impossible.

" _How about you? Getting anywhere?"_ He'd tried to sound more enthusiastic _._

" _Found a place. In Montana."_ In the background, he'd heard the engine noise change, then she was back _. "I should be able to get it all sorted out today."_

He'd thought about their route. They could go through Montana; it was on the way _. "Ellie, any chance we can –,"_

" _Dean, I've got to go, some kind of accident up ahead. I'll call you later, okay?"_

" _Sure."_ The line had gone silent and he'd stared at the cell for a long moment before putting it back in his pocket _._

Leaning back in the chair, he tipped the bottle up and swallowed the beer absently. She hadn't called back yet. There could be a lot of reasons for that. He was trying not to think of the worst case scenarios.

Sam was only trying to keep him from thinking, from _obsessing_ , about Roman, about the problems of the world. But he was burning out anyway, he couldn't think straight, couldn't keep the despair from washing over him. He thought about just leaving now, finding a car and just driving away. Sam could handle whatever it was he'd found on his own; his brother'd done it enough. He was a grown-up.

He wouldn't. Didn't know where she was, or how to get hold of her to find out.

He couldn't.

Sam might've told him that he could take care of himself, now, and maybe in different circumstances he might've gone with what he wanted. But the old pull, the old fear, to be around, to protect his brother, that was still strong. The levis had too many eyes.

Was he making a difference? He didn't think so. What was worse, he felt like he'd never made a difference, as if everything they'd done had been futile and pointless. Somewhere inside of him, he knew that wasn't true, but it felt true. He let out a very soft groan, dropping his head into his hands. What the fuck were they doing, he and Sam, driving across the country hunting for cases when the world was going to drown in black ooze and he couldn't even find himself?

He stood abruptly, driven from the chair by the knowledge that he needed her. Needed her calm and the definition he felt when she was around, needed the warmth and the comfort, and needed her to help him combat the crap that was filling his head like acid-soaked cotton wool.

He took a single step forward, and stopped, expression twisting into a self-denigrating snarl. He couldn't go.

Sinking back down into the chair slowly, he barely noticing the cool wetness of the beer that had slopped onto his hand with his sudden movement. He squinted at his watch in the thin light from the street. Too late to go and get something that would let him get a few hours of real sleep before morning.

 _But I can't find my way home.  
_

* * *

 _ **March 14, 2012. US-12, Idaho**_

 _So enjoy it while it lasts, kid, 'cause hunting's the only clarity you're gonna find in this life._

Dean watched the road, the traffic ahead, and held back a derisive snort as the words played in his head. _Clarity? Surely you fucking well jest_. He hadn't felt clarity in this life for years.

He knew it'd been like that for him once. What had changed? The losses? The enormity of what they'd gone through? The sense of being a bug under a magnifying glass, pushed this way and that while the big kid holding the glass kept angling it to burn them? All of the above? His moments of clarity were few and far between, and all of them in the last year had come from being with someone who knew him, who understood how he worked and who'd helped find meaning in the meaningless junk in his mind.

What would it take to get back to that place of clarity, he wondered. The answer came immediately. The problem was that it wasn't possible.

 _You are the reason I've been waiting all these years._ The song wouldn't stop playing in his mind, along with the soothing, intricate guitar that accompanied it.

He didn't know _how_ to get from here to there. Nothing was going as he'd hoped it would, when she'd reappeared in his life and he'd gotten his hope back, and instead of getting easier, it was getting harder every day.

His cell rang and he dragged it out of his pocket, glancing at the unknown caller on the screen and lifting it to his ear. Sam hadn't stirred next to him.

"Yeah?"

" _Dean?_ " Ellie's voice sounded deceptively close this time, close enough that he half-expected to be able to smell her scent in the car.

"Hey, where are you?"

" _Virginia._ " He heard the exasperation in her voice and chewed on the edge of his lip. Virginia was the wrong way. They'd be through Montana before she could catch up. He felt disappointment seeping into him, feeling as if his bones were being filled with lead.

"What happened?"

" _Broke a conrod. Miles from anywhere, of course_." She sounded tired. " _I had to get a new truck, and it all took a lot of time. Where are you?_ "

"We're on the 12, passed Orofino about an hour ago." He couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice this time.

" _Is the case urgent?_ "

"Yeah." He glanced down at the map that sat folded up on the console between the front seats. "Can you make it to Seattle? Maybe fly over?"

In the silence that followed, he knew she was trying to make it fit. " _I've got to meet the agent in Montana in two days,_ " she said eventually. " _I need the truck to get there, so I wouldn't be able to fly until the end of the week._ "

 _Of course_. He listened to the silence at her end, one hand light on the wheel, the other tight around the cell.

" _Dean, are you okay?_ " There was a concern in her voice that hadn't been there a moment ago. She picked up his emotions easily anyway, and he knew he wasn't hiding them very well.

 _No, Ellie, I'm not okay. Not okay at all_. He stared at the road unwinding in front of him, his chest constricting. _I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time_. _And I can't find my way home._

"Yeah, I'm fine." The words came out without him thinking about them, or meaning to say them, habit of a lifetime. "It's okay, I … I–" He stopped, clearing his throat. "I – uh – miss you."

The lie tasted bitter in his mouth. He didn't want to screw up her plans because he needed her. Didn't want her to worry about him when she had things she needed to do. It didn't make the lie any better.

" _I miss you too._ "

There was a yearning in the four words that tugged at him, making him wonder what the hell was wrong with them that they weren't ditching the obligations and making it happen.

For months now, he'd been trying to figure out a way to make it work. Everything he'd tried had been derailed almost as soon as he'd thought of it. He'd tried to do this with Lisa and Ben and that hadn't worked out either, although for different reasons. At least Lisa and Ben had always been in the one place, it had only been his schedule he'd needed to think about. Trying to fit in time between what he and Sam were doing, and what she was doing required a working knowledge of fucking rocket science. It hadn't been so bad before Bobby's death.

Irrelevantly, he wondered if this need to be with her, to have her close to him, was being _soft_. He thought it might be, except that when she was around, he felt like he could handle anything; no job too big, no problem unsolvable. She never let him fall into the habit of just following a plan without questioning it. When she was there, he made decisions, found answers, not once doubting in his ability to do it.

"I don't know how long we'll be in Seattle, but we can come back through Montana, catch up then."

" _Yeah, that'd be good,_ " she said quietly, and he knew she wasn't entirely convinced that he was okay. He cleared his throat.

"Be careful, okay?"

" _You too._ "

Then there was the void of an empty line, and he put the cell back in his pocket, and focussed on the road. Another week, maybe. He could handle a week. It had been four weeks since he'd seen her last, in Kansas. Four weeks wasn't much time, just ten years in Hell. It'd felt like that too.

When was the last time hunting had seemed black and white to him? Simple? He couldn't remember. Before Hell, he thought. Most of the memories in his life were BH or AH … the times before and the times after, and everything was simpler BH in his memories, despite knowing the confusion and the unmaking of him had started earlier than that.

When was the last time he'd enjoyed a hunt? Gotten a feeling of satisfaction that he'd done the job right, killed the thing and saved the people? He let his thoughts drift back through the years, but he couldn't remember feeling that for a long, long time. _Hunter_. It was what he did, and it was who he was. He'd known that for some time too. His memories of looking forward to cases, of being able to utilise his experience and skills, those were all distant. For the last few years he'd been pushed around by destiny and angels and demons, he couldn't think of any decisions he'd made for himself, by himself.

 _To tell you the truth, I don't know why I'm doing much of anything anymore._

He'd said that to Ness, precipitating the diatribe on being soft and having clarity. And it had been true, both then and now. He'd lost a lot of the anger, when he'd started grieving for Bobby. What had remained wasn't strong enough to make him punch through the disappointments and the failures. He looked through whatever he could find on Roman and his businesses, but it was just for something to do, nothing he could find had helped at all and Frank was doing a better job of finding real information. Sam could see him sinking, not knowing what to do about it, other than overload them both with cases. And every day, every moment, he could feel himself drowning slowly, looking for a way out, looking for a way home, looking for any road to get back to where he could feel himself, where he could see himself again, and where he could find something solid to stand on.

She could give him that, he knew. But she wasn't around, wouldn't be around for another week, at least.

The tyres thrummed over the concrete, dusk settled along the horizon, broken now by the ever-climbing peaks. He turned on the headlights and started looking for a motel. He was damned if he was going to sleep on the floor tonight, and he wanted a hot shower, hot coffee in the morning, some kind of real rest tonight.

* * *

 _ **Ritzville, Washington**_

Dean sat on the couch, staring blankly at the television on the other side of the room. They were in Ritzville. In Washington. He knew that because it was printed all over the motel's signs and stationery. Another small town in the middle of farmland, population under fifteen hundred.

Not that far out of Montana that he couldn't get another car and turn around, he thought distractedly. But she wasn't there. After a moment of pondering that certainty, he remembered that she was somewhere between Virginia and Illinois. She wouldn't be around for another two days, at least. He rubbed his hand along his jaw, feeling the rough rasp of the stubble. He should have a shower, shave, become human again. He looked at the television, some prime-time show playing, and couldn't muster the energy to get off the couch.

The motel was only one short step up from the squats they'd been staying in. But it had hot water. And beds. And the bare minimum of kitchen facilities. He looked around as the couple in the room next to theirs gave the bed a workout, the bed frame thumping enthusiastically against the thin wall, accompanied by gasps, sighs and shouts.

Sam had gone to get food. He should've gone with him, he thought. Being alone was getting worse. He didn't want to talk, not really, but he wanted to hear Sam's voice, the conversation blunting the thoughts in his head, blunting the feelings that were careering out of control. He leaned down and opened his duffle, pulling out the brown paper bag holding the pint bottle he'd bought on the way in.

Drinking blunted the cacophony too. Scrambled all the thoughts. But it was taking more and more to get to the same level of numbness. He remembered his first real whiskey hangover. That had been on barely a third of a bottle, two big glasses. He'd sworn off his father's hooch for years after that. Now, that wouldn't even damp down the edges, he thought tiredly.

He unscrewed the lid and filled the flask first. Then he stretched out along the length of the couch and drank straight from the bottle.

 _And that makes you luckier than most,_ Ness said in his head, the replay of the Treasury Agent's conversation refusing to stop.

 _I've had about all the luck I can stand_ , he thought. Any more fucking luck and he wouldn't survive at all.

Maybe in Ness' world, in a time that hadn't been run by Heaven and Hell, there was a straight, clear path in hunting. No judges or juries needed for the killing of monsters. Just find 'em, gank 'em and burn 'em, and you're done. What would Ness do here? How would he find the leviathan? How would he kill them? He closed his eyes. _All good questions_. He hadn't asked if the lawman had had a family, back in '44. Was the man really tough enough to go through losing them, if some vengeance-seeking monster or madman came after them?

The door opened and he opened his eyes, looking over at his brother as he came through, big paper bags in either hand, the smell of hot, fresh food reaching tantalizingly through the small room.

"You started early." Sam glanced down at the bottle in his hand.

Dean screwed the lid back on and tossed the bottle on top of the duffle. "What'd you get?"

"Burgers, fries, pie." Sam gestured to the unopened bag sitting on the small table.

Dean got up and walked to the table, pulling out the food and sitting in the chair opposite his brother. It was still hot, the burger not too bad at all. He felt Sam's eyes on him and looked up, tucking the bite into one cheek.

"What?"

"We going to talk about what's going on with you?" Sam asked, taking a bite of the toasted BLT in his hand.

"No." Dean dropped his gaze back to the food, knowing without needing to look that his brother's face would be screwed up in irritation.

"Where's Ellie?"

"Virginia. Or Illinois. Or somewhere in between," he shrugged. He heard Sam's deep exhale and ignored it.

"She find a place yet?"

"Yeah. In Montana." Dean dunked a fry into the ketchup and ate it.

"Near Whitefish?" Sam's furrowed up at him.

"I didn't get around to asking the precise location."

"You want to spend some time with her, Dean?" Sam finished his sandwich and wiped his fingers. "I could just go on and get started on Seattle by myself?"

Dean shook his head. "She won't be there for a couple of days. I … uh … said we'd come back this way, see her next week when the job's finished in Seattle."

"Sounds like a good idea," Sam said. "You could take your time. I could go back to Whitefish, see if Ray or Patrick has come up with anything new."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, staring at his plate. "Maybe."

Sam shrugged, getting up and wadding up the trash. "I told you before, man, you don't need to watch my back all the time. You deserve to look after yourself for a change."

Dean pushed his plate aside, his hunger vanishing. "Right."

That's what he'd been trying to figure out, wasn't it, he thought. To have what he wanted for a change?

 _Is taking care of Sam an excuse so that you don't have to go after what you want, Dean?_

Ellie's comment returned to him, and he shifted uncomfortably in the chair. _It's stupid to think you need me around all the time. You're a grown-up_. He'd said it himself. He didn't have to be there twenty-four-seven. Sam would manage on his own.

The idea of staying with Ellie for longer than a couple of days suddenly didn't seem like a bad one. Hell, it seemed like a great idea.

"You called Frank lately?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "I'll get a prepaid in the morning, call him before we head out."

* * *

" _Came home one day and found them all dead."_

Dean jerked awake, feeling the scream rushing up his throat and clamping his mouth shut tight to keep it in. His heart was racing, his t-shirt wet with sweat, his ribs lifting and falling as if he'd run up a mountain.

He looked over to the other bed, seeing the massive lump beneath the covers, breathing slowly and steadily. _And thank you so much for mentioning Frank tonight, Sam_ , he thought sourly.

He couldn't get what Ellie'd told him about the man out of his head, couldn't make it disappear, couldn't stop himself imagining the scene and what it'd done to the guy. It followed him down into his dreams on more than one occasion, additional weaponry for his subconscious as if that needed anything more to work with.

The dream clung to him, suffocating him, and he swung his legs out, getting up and padding to the bathroom. He closed the door and flipped on the light and twisted the faucet, cold rushing from the tap. The wet shirt was stripped off, left hanging over the rail as he put his head right under the running water, over his face and through his hair and down his neck, trying to shock the dream fragments loose, trying to freeze them out.

He was shivering when he turned off the tap and looked at himself in the mirror above the sink.

The face that stared back was familiar and not, he thought, frowning at the reflection. He looked older. Harder. He turned away, grabbing the towel and drying himself vigorously, rubbing the scratchy cloth over his face and head, over his shoulders and back and chest, reddening his skin.

When was the last time he'd really slept? All night?

 _Whitefish_.

Three solid nights when he and Ellie had gotten back from Oregon. Since they'd parted in Kansas, he'd swung somewhere between a couple of hours, and less often, four or five. Usually not more than that. If he didn't get woken by a nightmare, he would just wake, two or three or four hours later, his head already filled with thoughts of Roman and where he was, what he was doing, how to kill him, how to get rid of them. At least the nightmares vacated sometime after he woke. The thoughts spun around in endless, lazy circles.

Turning off the light, he walked out of the bathroom, going to the duffle at the foot of the bed for a clean, dry shirt. As the shirt came out, there was a clink and he saw the pint bottle, picking it up and staring at it in the dim light that filtered through the motel's curtains. Barely a mouthful was left. He didn't remember hitting it that hard. He opened it and tossed the last mouthful down, feeling its warmth trickle down through his chest to his stomach as he replaced the cap and dropped the empty bottle back onto the bag. Medicinal, he told himself. Better than sleeping tablets since the after-effects were more manageable.

Crawling under the covers, Dean grimaced as he felt the cooling dampness on one side of the bed, moving over to the other side. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. He couldn't seem to remember how to pretend he was alright anymore. He'd tried, and he thought he was fooling Sam … some of the time … maybe … but he couldn't lie to himself these days. Couldn't make that mental shift.

Another few days, he reminded himself. He'd gotten through twenty-eight years of crap; he could manage another few days.

He'd thought it would be Sam, feeling a faint prick of guilt.

Even after they'd left Sarah, and what'd happened with Madison, he'd always hoped Sam would find someone, someone like Jess. Someone his little brother could love the way he'd loved Jess. He'd known if Sam did find someone like that, he'd want out. A few months ago, that'd seemed like a good thing. It was different now. The levis weren't going to let them out.

But that didn't matter because it hadn't been Sam. He dragged in a long, slow breath.

There was still a part of him that couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it was real, not some convoluted dream he'd come up with to ease a loneliness that just kept on growing. Couldn't believe she'd looked head-on at what he'd done, at the mess it had all left behind, and loved him.

Down where he lived and breathed, where it was just him, he still thought of himself as broken. Not _as_ broken now, but still in too many pieces to count … but it was a feeling that disappeared when she was there, and she looked at him – relied on him – gave him what he needed.

He didn't know how, exactly, but the pain and the guilt went away when she was around. Not erased exactly, but it got smaller, he got a perspective on it, so it didn't drown him; and that strange alchemy left him standing, feeling real and solid and … and, somehow, okay with himself again.

It scared him, he thought, staring at the not-quite-dark ceiling. The not knowing why he was allowed to have this, when everything else had been ripped away.

 _Maybe it's not_ them _. Maybe it's you._

The ceiling had no answers for him, just the flickering chase of light and shadow as headlights passed on the highway. He rolled onto his side, eyes closing as he tracked the noises inside the room – the whir of the fridge's motor starting up and the steady whistle and sigh coming from the other bed. Without looking, he knew his brother had rolled onto his back. Everything he could hear, even the muted hum of the traffic on the highway, was familiar. Thousands of nights spent in thousands of motels, most of them just like this.

He wasn't anyone special.

 _You are the reason I've been waiting all these years  
_

From the very beginning, it'd seemed like she knew him. Even when he'd tried to hide his crap away, he thought she'd seen it. And when he'd told her, told her the worst things, he couldn't figure out why she hadn't run instead of sticking around. He thought he would've. Her life hadn't been easy. It was a lot more complicated with him in it.

He'd thought for a long time, when she'd left, that's exactly what'd happened. When she'd returned, he found out he'd been wrong. About everything, pretty much.

The memories of that time were vivid and chaotic. Twisting around uncomfortably, he found himself longing for another drink, just to take the edge off the mix of pain and raw longing that accompanied them. It had taken them a lot of time to get past the two years they'd lost. They were still trying to figure out how to make it work and he was still uncertain it ever could, the way he wanted it. A home. A family.

And he still didn't feel like he'd done anything to deserve having something he wanted and needed so fucking much.

At the back of his mind, that was worrying him. The thought lurked there like a damned mugger, that if he hadn't paid for it, somehow, it could – it _would_ – be taken away from him. It wasn't a rational thought, but that didn't seem to matter.

It came from the part of him that'd freaked at the thought of being noticed by God. From the part of him that'd listened in abject horror when Zachariah had told him about his destiny. The part that believed that he was an ordinary guy and had no business mixing in with the powers of the universe. The part that believed he was either being taken for an elaborate ride, one that would break him completely if it was revealed; or that he'd handed the Fates a way to get to him that was even more foolproof than his loyalty to his family. Lose-lose, all the way around.

That low-grade worry kept him trying to hold back. To not need so much. To not want so fucking deeply. When she was with him, it was impossible. But when he was alone, he could tell himself it wasn't the way he remembered, it wasn't as real as he thought; could tell himself if something took her away, or something happened, he could still go on, as he had before.

 _I can exist without you._

He didn't know why he did it. It didn't make him feel better, or make the rest of the crap any easier to deal with.

Opening his eyes, he realised he could see things more clearly in the room now, and he turned to the window. Grey light outlined the curtains. Yawning, he realised he'd gotten maybe three hours of decent sleep through the night.

Waste of money getting the room for that.

* * *

 _ **March 15, 2012. I-90W, Washington**_

Hiss of tyres. Blat of engine as Sam gunned it through the gears. A deep sigh beside him. Dean opened his eyes. Darkness outside. Taillights ahead of them. He caught a glimpse of a sign as they went past. Twenty miles to Seattle. He wiped his mouth, feeling as if he'd been sleeping too long, and nowhere near long enough.

"Morning."

Dean straightened in the seat. He pulled out the small silver flask and shook it, unscrewing the lid.

"Is that Bobby's?"

He saw Sam's glance in his peripheral vision, ignoring the question as he poured a hit into his mouth.

"I didn't know you kept that."

"Yeah, mine sprung a leak," he said shortly. He didn't want to talk right now, the shreds of his dreams lurking around in his mind, distorting everything.

"You know, most people would just carry a – a photo or something for a memento."

"Shut up, man. I – I'm – I'm honouring the guy, all right?" He didn't know why he was bothering to try to justify it. Sam had to know that he was about at the end of the line with his ability to cope. "This is, uh, grief therapy, kind of like you and your wild-goose chase."

"Wild-goose chase?"

"Yeah." He closed his eyes briefly, rubbing his knuckles against them, wishing that they could just stop talking. He needed food. He needed painkillers. He needed … to be somewhere else.

"Four guys murdered in two weeks, hands and feet cut off," Sam said forcefully.

"Yeah, well, some guy with a foot fetish run amok." Dean turned his head slightly, looking obliquely out of the window beside him. Did his brother think that he cared, even remotely, about this?

"Grown men thrown so hard they went through walls." Sam couldn't hide his exasperation. He glanced down at the seat beside him and picked up the file, shoving against Dean's chest as his eyes cut back to the road. "Did you – did you even read the article?"

Dean looked down at the spill of paper over his lap, his mouth twisting. "No, I was napping."

"Well, anyway, what else you got going on?" Sam looked at him. "Ellie's house-hunting; Dick Roman's a dead end for now; you might as well–"

"Stay busy." Dean finished tiredly, shuffling the loose pages back into the file and extracting the news report. He tilted it to the available light, eyes narrowing.

"Exactly."

"Yeah."

 _And I ain't done nothing wrong, but I can't find my way home._

* * *

 **AN:** _The next story in the series is_ Listen To Your Heart _. What happens in Seattle follows the episode,_ The Slice Girls _, with some minor variations. From there, the Ramble On series moves to an AU branching to cover the repercussions._


End file.
